When Helping Others Hurts - When Helping Others Is Harmful

When Helping Hurts

Text and Artwork:
Copyright © 2009 Beth E Peterson.
All rights reserved.

I am a helpful person; it is a part of my nature. As such, I have had to become aware of how that aspect of myself opens me up to being vulnerable to others. Now, if you have read any of the information on ultra-authority here, you know that I strongly urge people to find and protect their toeholds...their vulnerabilities, so that they are harder to coerce or to manipulate.

However, even if someone is not trying to deliberately hurt you or manipulate you, certain vulnerabilities can lead to personal damage or distress. That is the case with helpfulness.

Not only am I helpful by nature, I have also worked in many ‘helping' type jobs...being a psychologist, tutoring, and so on. Currently, I am working in group homes with the mentally retarded, another ‘helping' situation. All of this experience has led me to some very distinct conclusions.

When Helping Others Harms Them
All too often when we wish to help others, we don't look far enough or deep enough at the consequences and outgrowths of what we are doing. Many times, our own helping behaviors can get in the way of the other person's growth and ability to become independent. This is especially true in situations where the person you want to help is of a much lesser ability-level than you are...say, parents with children, those who are working with the developmentally disabled, or even an older and more seasoned employee showing the "new kid" the ropes.

We need to step back and ask ourselves what is truly in the best interests of the person we wish to help. To do something for another person does not teach them or help them learn how to do it for themselves. In many situations, because we have not thought through the end results of what our helping behaviors are doing, we end up making the other person dependent upon us or others, rather than gain their own mastery over the thing they need help with.

This then, brings up the question of goals. What is your goal when you want to help another person? Is your goal true altruism (I care and want them to be happy/safe/etc)? Is it self-importance (look at how nice I am)? Is it self-serving (if they know how, they won't bug me anymore)? Is it because you think you have to (but I'm supposed to help...my parents/teacher/preacher expects it of me)? Check and see what your actual goal is.

Once you know why you want to help others, it becomes easier to know how to gear your behaviors appropriately. Sometimes, it may also mean a re-thinking of your reasons and behavior patterns. That's okay. You need to find out who you are really, and then do the best thing possible for your own self. Even being self-serving or self-centered is fine. All of us need to do things geared specifically for our own inner needs, as long as you are not harming others or your self in the process.

Personally, my thought is, in order to make certain that I will not harm another through my attempts to help them, I must keep the following goal clearly in mind: To help them attain the skills and information they need in order to become, as much as possible, independent, their own resource center and their own personal authority. If they are limited, such as through physical or mental disability, than I want to find the way in which they can best compensate for those limitations, allowing for as much independence and self-determination as possible while maintaining safety and the ability for further growth.

When Helping Others Harms You
There is another side to this coin that is often missed. That second dark side is the fact that many people who wish to help others put themselves unwittingly into damaging situations when they do so. Now, I am not talking about the obvious "run into the burning building to save another" type of thing. What I am referring to is much, much more subtle, and much more internally, psychologically stressing and potentially very harmful indeed.

Many people who want to help others, don't put limits on that help. This is extraordinarily dangerous to us, the ones who wish to help. We don't count the costs to ourselves as we enter situations in which we are wishing to help another. We don't limit to what degree we are willing to put ourselves out for the other, we don't limit what kind of help we are willing to give...we don't limit how long we are willing to give them our help, we don't limit the kind of person we are willing to help. A lot of times, we don't even think to limit our help to those who really need it.

All of these factors really do need limits placed upon them. All of these factors do need to be weighed. As soon as you are aware that a situation is harming you, causing you distress, stress, or is resulting in negative changes in your mood, you need to do a heavy-duty reassessment of the situation. You cannot truly help others effectively when you are under too much duress yourself.

Sometimes this may mean that for your own well-being you will leave the situation completely. Other times, you may be able to find a better way to balance your needs with the other person's needs so that neither person is harmed. Other times, you may be able to remain partially within the situation, but limit your involvement so as to mitigate the distress and/or give yourself time to recover from each stressful period.

Helping sometimes really can be harming. The trick is to seek to discover and then pay attention to your own and the other person's needs and well-being, and working within both of those frameworks.